Madjid Khaladj - Master of Iranian Percussions

A solo concert by the Iranian percussionist Madjid Khaladj is an invitation to travel throughout a vast country. Madjid Khaladj takes us to a landscape of sound and silence. His virtuoso playing vibrates throughout space. His movements and strokes are indiscernible to the eye but their dance in miniature makes the impact of each sound perceptible to the listener. He thus becomes a storyteller, a singer, an architect, while he remains a percussionist and a musician, reflecting his deep culture. Thousands of variations on a rhythmical module tell us a story.

A musician and improviser worthy of the name, Madjid Khaladj combines the qualities of an expert performer and an erudite theoretician, as well as a creator. Based on strict rules, improvisation is essential to Persian music.

Musicians are at all times both interpreters and composers. The tradition taught him the richness of Persian rhythms. Alive and diverse, these may stem from poetry, following well-defined metrics, or be linked to dances or specific situations. The way he plays gives him the opportunity not only to invent other ornamentation, but also to penetrate into man's deepest inner self. Madjid Khaladj goes even further and his approach has led him towards the elaboration of a whole repertoire of solos.

In this radiant dynamic, Madjid Khaladj takes the floor during his solo concerts. Trained first as a tombak player in the traditional school of the master Hossein Teherani, he now also plays the daf, the dayre and such small percussion instrument as the zang-e saringoshti (small cymbals). Filled with their history, he lets his rhythms talk and sing, creating a clear, fascinating sound landscape where each stroke, each acceleration, each ornamentation, each silence, has its own significance.

Madjid Khaladj goes beyond all musical systems, beyond the anecdotal aspect of forms shut in specific histories. At every moment during his concerts, he builds his own, coherent musical language. His roots are perceptible and immovable, and gradually the energy of the sounds and the eloquence of the rhythms carry us to a new sound space, of free imagination.

Martine Huvenne, musicologiste

"Madjid Khaladj is one of the most passionate percussionnists of the Persian art Music." Le Monde

"A musical exploration with a completed science of arithmetic and esthetics..." Le Monde de la musique

"The beauty of the sound, the always amazing precision guided by a sure taste, Khaladj is offered, offered to us the luxury to play an interior music." DIAPASON

"Tief spirituell gertanke Schonheit, meditative Magie pur und ein Perkussionsreichtum, beidem man vermeint, ein ganzes Orchester sei am Werk. Uberwaltigend." KRONEN Zeitung

"So eloquent und dialektreich" Baseler Zeitung

"A gate gently pushed on a magic world of sounds in turn fulgurating, irenic, ruffled, incisive, quiescent, precipice, ... Thank you Magic Khaladj !" PERCUSSIONS magazine

"Under this neutral and university title of Percussions of Iran hides really one of the strongest honorings makes for the music by a creator, for his deep powers ..." Chronic' Art